At the top right corner of every PEP Web article, there is a button to convert it to PDF. Just click this button and downloading will begin automatically.

For the complete list of tips, see PEP-Web Tips on the PEP-Web support page.

Freud, A. (1967). About Losing and Being Lost. Psychoanal. St. Child, 22:9-19.

Welcome to PEP Web!

Viewing the full text of this document requires a subscription to PEP Web.

If you are coming in from a university from a registered IP address or secure referral page you should not need to log in. Contact your university librarian in the event of problems.

If you have a personal subscription on your own account or through a Society or Institute please put your username and password in the box below. Any difficulties should be reported to your group administrator.

Username:

Password:

Can't remember your username and/or password? If you have forgotten your username and/or password please click here. Once there, click the 'Forgotten Username/Password' button, fill in your email address (this must be the email address that PEP has on record for you) and click "Send." Your username and password will be sent to this email address within a few minutes. If this does not work for you please click here for customer support information.

INTERPRETATIONS OF LOSING: DYNAMIC AND LIBIDO-ECONOMIC

Losing and mislaying objects came under analytic scrutiny at an early date. In 1901, in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, we find it mentioned for the first time, and, further, more explicitly in the chapters on "Parapraxes" of the Introductory Lectures(1916-1917). In both publications, Freud explained losing, as he did the other common errors such as forgetting, slips of the tongue, etc., on the basis of a conscious intention being interfered with by a wish which arises from the unconscious. In the case of losing this means that we have the unconsciousdesire to discard something which consciously we wish to retain. The unconscious tendency makes use of some favorable moment (when our attention is turned elsewhere, when we are tired, preoccupied, etc.) to have its own way. We then lose the object in question; i.e., we throw it away, or put it away, without realizing that we are doing so.

A number of examples of such happenings were collected in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, aiming, above all, "at paving the way for the necessary assumption of unconscious yet operative mental processes" (p. 272, n.).

For our metapsychological thinking, on the other hand, it is significant that Freud's interest in the phenomenon of losing went, as early as 1916, beyond the explanation of two forces interfering with each other as well as beyond the need to prove the existence of an operative unconscious.

[This is a summary or excerpt from the full text of the book or article. The full text of the document is available to subscribers.]